CLEVELAND, Ohio-My friend Sean McCafferty recently asked me to read his screenplay. It was called "The Parker Ranch." It's a true story about a woman named Adele von Ohl Parker. I don't know how it's possible I never heard of her. But there you have it.

The screenplay was based a on book called "The Search for Adele Parker" by Robert Charlton Hull. Adele Parker was an equestrian stunt woman. She was a silent film star who performed with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. She was pals with celebrities of the day such as Tom Mix, Gene Autry, Will Rogers, George Ringling and Fatty Arbuckle. She was considered one of the most talented horsewomen in the world. She used to do stunts like jump a horse off the top of a tall tower into a tank of water. She could pick up a gold coin off the ground while riding a horse sidesaddle going full bore.

Somehow she wound up in North Olmsted in a part of the Emerald Necklace she called "Paradise" ranch. When she arrived in Cleveland to do a show at the Palace Theater in 1929, it was said that her total worth was seven horses and 70 cents.

Parker spent the next 37 years at Paradise teaching three generations of children and adults how to ride horses.

She kept a menagerie of animals out at the ranch, including cats, dogs, chickens, goats, pigs and even a Guernsey cow named Sybil -- who once got rented and shipped to downtown Cleveland for a dairyman's convention. Some of the animals were fond of wandering off and stopping traffic in the nearby suburban streets.

But the story most people love to tell is how she kept a circus friend's elephants out at the ranch and had folks in the Valley doing double takes while the giant beasts lolled in the Rocky River. She even let the kids at the ranch have rides on them.

Adele Parker was also something of a lightning rod for controversy. Some neighbors took exception to the black cook she hired at the ranch. The story goes that Parker had to face down and run off a group of Ku Klux Klansmen who wanted to burn a cross on her property to protests the cook's presence.

Another time her ex-husband and former rodeo partner Jim Parker showed up unannounced and drunk with loaded pistols. He ran everybody off the ranch. Adele was on the road at the time. It took the North Olmsted Chief of Police and several deputies to talk him down and convince him to leave town peacefully.

Parker died of a heart attack in 1966. It was said that she was preparing an unusual pet duck for an appearance on the Mike Douglas show when she passed away. It seems she was all about show business right up to the very end.

My friend George Wasmer wound up buying the Parker Ranch and still lives there on Mastick Road. He knew Adele Parker.